


Vigil

by Mendax



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-19
Updated: 2011-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:43:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendax/pseuds/Mendax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezra is out of his element.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigil

Ezra hovered outside the doorway to his own room, hesitant to enter though he’d been as much as ordered to. The lingering fear behind Nathan’s terse “Keep an eye on him” before he’d rushed back to the clinic — and Josiah — had planted itself in his imagination.

His room, because it was closer than Chris’s own; the bed wider and more comfortable. Him, because it was his room, and because Buck would be at JD’s side and Vin would be restlessly guarding the jail, most likely taking out his fear and frustration by quietly terrorizing its two surviving inmates.

Chris looked even worse close-up than he had from the doorway. He’d lost a lost of blood, Nathan said, and it showed in the waxy pallor of his skin. He lay propped up with a folded quilt and pillows supporting him. It seemed to help him breathe more easily past his bruised ribs. The bandage Ezra could see was stark white against the skin of Chris’s bicep. It was barely a graze, and the wound hadn’t bled through at all. The other one — the ugly, gouting hole in his thigh — was hidden away by the blankets that had slid down to bunch above his waist.

Ezra realized that he was staring at the faint movement of Chris’s chest that spoke of breath, of life. He took a deep breath of his own and turned away, casting his eyes around the room that had so recently been a noisy riot of chaotic activity. Ezra picked up the remains of Chris’s pants and shirt, cut away from him to get at his wounds, and held them for a long moment. Then he stooped back down and used them to wipe at the spots of blood from the doorway to the bed. There was more than he had thought. And it didn’t come clean; it just smeared and clung, and when he turned the rags in his hands to rub the smears away, the blood was there, too, on his hands.

Nathan had emptied the basin earlier. Used up all the water in addition to the boiling kettles Inez had rushed up the stairs. Nathan had carried out his own pile of torn cloth steeped in Chris’s blood. Ezra dumped the clothes into the empty basin and almost ran outside and down the stairs. Dropped the clothes right into one of the street fires and went around to the pump, where he scrubbed at his own hands ruthlessly, the chill helping to bring him back to his senses.

He filled the basin and brought it back upstairs.

The smell of blood wasn’t as strong anymore. The open window had carried out the worst of it. Ezra wondered whether it was all right for the window to be open. Wouldn’t Nathan have closed it if it weren’t? But Nathan had so much on his mind, with three men injured.

He dipped a glass into the basin in case Chris woke and needed water, and then set them both on the table next to the bed. Was he less pale than he had been? He certainly did not look much improved. The creases and lines of his face had not smoothed under the opiate Nathan had administered, but without Chris’s forceful personality behind them they looked like mere signs of age and hard living instead of delineations of a battered and unyielding character.

It made it difficult to look at his face, so Ezra let his gaze travel down to the reassuring muscled shoulders and chest. The white bandage was like a beacon drawing his eye, but he ignored it as best he could and focused instead on Chris’s arm, with its light covering of hair, still showing the sun’s touch despite his current paleness. His hand was loosely curved and slack.

Before he knew what he was doing, Ezra had perched lightly on the edge of the bed and lifted that hand in his own. A scent came to him with the motion, familiar and foreign all at once. _Gun oil,_ he realized. Gun oil carried on the warm waft of Chris’s skin.

He turned Chris’s hand over and could see it, glistening in the creases of his knuckles.

He was overcome with a wave of fear and anger that left him trembling. Chris had been in the room he rented when the gunfight broke out. Ezra could see it now: Chris’s revolver unassembled, in pieces, oiled with a rag nearby; Chris reaching for his rifle, and then walking out into the fight with it instead of shooting from range. Walking out with a weapon too cumbersome, too sluggish, for a cover fight in the middle of town. All of which Chris knew.

“You bastard,” he whispered to the slack face and fragile eyelids. “You son of a bitch bastard.”

His thumb rubbed over Chris’s knuckles and came away with a film of oil. He tightened his jaw and reached into his waistcoat pocket for a handkerchief. He dipped it into the basin of water and wrung the excess from it, then wiped it across Chris’s hand.

It took time, and care. Ezra focused on the hand he held, the deep creases of his knuckles, the rough patches of callus, the short, hard nails and prominent veins, the surprisingly fine bones. He dipped the handkerchief again and again, washing away the grime with a gentleness and emotion he could never otherwise show.

When he finished, Chris’s hands were clean and cold as a corpse’s, and Ezra shivered, angry with himself for the thought. He took them both between his own to warm them, and only then noticed that Chris’s eyes were open a sliver, the lamplight just catching in their dark green depths.

His heart jumped into his throat, and he wet his lips nervously.

“…’zra?” Chris’s voice was raspy and dry, almost too quiet to make out. A puzzled line had formed between his eyebrows.

“You were shot,” Ezra said stupidly.

Chris’s eyes closed briefly, then opened a little wider as he looked around, plainly confused.

“You’re in my room. It was closest. You … your leg. You lost a lot of blood. Nathan ... Nathan got the bullet out.”

His eyes slid closed again.

“Water,” Ezra remembered suddenly. “Would you like some water?”

There was no answer. Ezra started to withdraw his hands from Chris’s to reach for the cup, but Chris’s hand tightened on his. Not much — his grip was weak, but it was enough. Ezra settled back into place and a slight frown eased from Chris’s brow.

A moment later his breath deepened once more into sleep. Ezra stayed where he was, feeling the warmth steal back into Chris’s hands, not relinquishing his hold.


End file.
